


F.B.I-Smell-a-Fake

by monj



Category: Psych, Psych/Supernatural crossover, Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Crossover, Gen, Ghosts, Humor, Pineapples
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-29
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 01:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monj/pseuds/monj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who's this sneaking into the crime scene that Shawn's trying to sneak onto?!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

This was the third case in a row where Gus had not objected to sneaking back onto the crime scene. Maybe Shawn should reward him with that smoothie maker for the office that Shawn had been wanting for the past month. He thought about it as they rode the elevator up and decided that yes, unlimited access to orange pineapple smoothies was just what Gus would like most.

“What are we doing here again, Shawn?” Gus demanded.

Then again, maybe not. “I told you Gus, I need another look at this crime scene. The neighbor didn’t do it, I know it.” The elevator doors binged open and he walked out, Gus following, less reluctantly than he wanted Shawn to believe.

“She’s their number one suspect! She was the only one around when the murder happened _and_ she doesn’t have an alibi.” Gus looked mildly triumphant at that statement as they got to the apartment door and went in with a nod to McNab, who was on duty. Gus never would believe him that acting like you belonged somewhere would get you into almost anywhere. That and sneaking a peek at who would be on duty and then dropping donuts off at their desk earlier that morning.

“Unless you think that a woman showing signs of encroaching arthritis is capable of tightly gripping a knife while stabbing someone violently multiple times, she didn’t do it!” Shawn chided Gus. “And besides, they thought of her as a suspect before we did, so they’re obviously wrong.”

Gus snorted. “Right. And what do you expect to find here?”

“Well, I don’t know Gus, possibly a clue?” Shawn said before they both stopped short as they rounded the corner from the entry way into the living room. Two men in suits were standing there, one of them holding a strange looking electronic device. “Was not expecting to find this, though. Ah, who are you?” Shawn could have sworn he recognized everyone who worked at the station, and Juliet would have informed him if anyone else had been brought in on this case.

One of them – the taller one – stepped forward, reaching in his jacket pocket and holding out an ID. “Sam Masters, FBI, and this is my partner Dean Thompson. We’re here to look into this string of murders.”

“String of murders?” Shawn heard Gus say. “What string of murders?”

“There’s been a string of murders in this area,” Sam said, speaking more towards Gus, probably because Gus, as usual, was dressed up.

“But the police haven’t found any connections between them,” Gus protested.

“We have reason to suspect there might be a connection,” Sam said.

While this exchange had been going on, Shawn had taken in the obvious imperfections in the badge and ID, how uncomfortable the two men looked in their suits, the at least two concealed weapons besides the gun at his hip the shorter one had on him, and how rough their hands were and came to some conclusions that he didn’t like. Namely, that these two were not FBI agents. Secondly, that if they weren’t feds, chances were they were connected to this crime in some way. And thirdly, that Sam had to be at least part sasquatch, because Shawn was pretty sure that he could reach his absurdly long arms over and crush both him and Gus in one fell swoop.

And, oh look, Dean – Shawn was _not_ going to refer to these two as agents - had obviously drawn some of his own conclusions of them, because now he stepped up in front of Sam. “Sam, shut your trap.” He crossed his arms and turned to face Shawn and Gus squarely. “Who the hell are you?” Shawn knew that look – it was the look of someone who could see through bullshit. Luckily, Shawn had been getting those looks since he’d turned five and had been tall enough to snitch cookies from the countertop and was an expert at getting around them.

“Shawn and Gus – we’re with the crime lab,” he lied smoothly, speaking fast before Gus had a chance to open his mouth. He could feel Gus giving him a sharp look, but Shawn kept his eyes on Dean. Dean who moved like he knew how to carry himself and who was glaring at them suspiciously, and Shawn willed him to believe Shawn because Lassie didn’t know where they were, and Officer McNab would not be much of a help against these two.

“Not really appropriate clothes for crime scene work, don’t you think?” Dean challenged.

Shawn looked down at his Mario tee shirt and shrugged. “We were just getting off and stopped by. Gus here thinks he left his hat here. Officer McNab at the door let us in. We golf with him on weekends.”

He elbowed Gus in the ribs, and Gus jumped and nodded in agreement. “Yeah – I lost my hat.”

At least Gus was playing along, although Shawn could see that he was confused. Thankfully, Dean was distracted by Sam tapping his shoulder and muttering “Dean, take a look at this, the EMF is going crazy.”

He kept EMF in mind to look up later and took advantage of their distraction to grab Gus’ arm and back towards the door. “Well, I guess your hat’s not here, Gus, so we’ll just leave you two to your investigation and be on our way. Come on Gus!”

He didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until they were back in the hallway, walking fast towards the elevators.

“What was that?” Gus demanded. “You didn’t have time to see anything, and you’ve never let feds keep you out before.”

“Yeah, except those weren’t feds,” Shawn retorted. “That badge was a fake.”

“What? Are you serious?”

Shawn shoved Gus into the elevator to get him moving again. “Yes I’m serious,” he hissed. “Don’t you think Dad taught me how to recognize a fake badge?”

Gus was frantically hitting the ground floor button. “Then why aren’t we calling the cops?”

Shawn had relaxed as soon as they’d gotten on the elevator - he hadn't wanted McNab to question why they were leaving so soon. He was fairly sure that whoever those two in the apartment were wouldn’t be waiting for them at the bottom, but it could have gone badly if McNab had gotten wind that something fishy was up. “Because they were both carrying more than just their side arms, and the shorter one moved like a flipping Marine, and I’d like to stay alive!”

“Then why aren’t we calling them now?” Gus demanded. “Those two will be gone before they get here now.”

“They’re already gone,” Shawn said flippantly, thinking hard as he led the way to Gus’ car. “Dean, or whatever his name really is, totally knows we made them.” He’d seen that in Dean’s face, just before they’d hit the door into the hallway, and he'd also seen Dean start to shove Sam towards the back window.

“WHAT?” Gus hit the side of his car and crouched down, looking wildly around. “Shawn, the murderers know we made them and you just let me walk out into the parking lot? Are you crazy? They’re gonna shoot us!”

“Relax.” Shawn slid into the car and leaned over to push open Gus’ door. “They’re not coming after us. And they’re not the murderers.”

“Then what were they doing there?” Gus huffed, still hunching his shoulders.

“They were investigating, like us,” Shawn said thoughtfully. “I don’t know who they are though, or what they were looking for, but they were clearly looking for clues. They hadn’t been to the scene before.” He thought for a second. “Go back to the Psych office, I need to check on something.”

“We need to call the police!”

“No, the office first.” Shawn was determined to find out what an EMF was, and why he didn’t have one. No fair that the other fake detectives had something that he didn’t!


	2. Chapter 2

It took a lot of convincing to get Gus not to run straight to the police with the tale of their inadvertent run-in with the fake FBI agents, but he managed. He always did. Of course, talking about lots of movies where snitches got offed by the bad guys had probably helped… Then he’d had to have a vision so that he could “psychically” find Edith Mercer’s arthritis medicine and get her off the suspect list. After that he had to have dinner with his dad and Gus, because he’d promised, and really, it wasn’t good to turn down free food, even if it was with his dad. And then it had taken him a while more to convince Gus that it was safe for him to go home, and that those two fakers _wouldn’t_ be there waiting for him with brass knuckles and cement shoes.

Which was why it was really late when he pulled into the Psych office so he could look up what EMF was. And that was when he discovered that Gus was indeed safe, because the two men were there, in the office, and clearly not waiting in Gus’ place.

He blinked at them and slowly raised his hands, because Dean – Shawn decided to call him that until he figured out their real names – had his hand on his gun before Shawn had even cleared the door. Besides that movement though, they just blinked back at him for a long second. Funny, Shawn had thought that FBI agents, even fake ones, would have better reaction times than this. “Hi…again,” he said. He tried out a smile that fell flat. “Fancy seeing you here.” His mind was racing as to why they _were_ here, and how they had found him.

“ _You’re_ Shawn Spencer?” Sam said incredulously.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Shawn said, distracted by Dean moving quickly towards him. Under no circumstances would he admit to jumping when the other man reached him, but Dean just brushed past him and locked the door.

“The psychic detective?” Sam pressed.

Dean interrupted before Shawn could answer. “Forget that, did you tell the cops about us?” He peeked through the blinds and then looked accusingly back at Shawn. Shawn didn’t know what for – there wasn’t anyone out there.

“No, I didn’t – hey! Woah there!” Shawn exclaimed as Dean efficiently frisked him, took his phone, and shoved him towards a desk chair in the middle of the room.

“Dean, man, hold on a second. You’re being unreasonable,” Sam protested.

“He works for the cops, and he saw us at that crime scene. This _is_ reasonable,” Dean countered. He turned to Shawn. “When did you realize we weren’t for real?”

Shawn shrugged. “About thirty seconds after he showed me his badge,” he said, figuring it couldn’t hurt anything now to admit that.

Dean rounded on Sam. “See? I freaking told you so!” he said. He turned back to Shawn. “So why didn’t you call the cops on us? You work for them.” And that was definitely an accusation, as if Shawn was the one doing something wrong, rather than the two guys who had broken into both a crime scene and his office.

Shawn thought fast. “I had a vision telling me I should find out why you were there before telling the police?” he tried. Dean didn’t appreciably relax, but he did put take his hand off his gun. “Listen, I know you’re not the murderers, so I thought it was more important to inform them that their current suspect was the wrong one so they could start looking for the real suspect, rather than having them spend time looking for you when you had nothing to do with it.” Dean finally backed up a few steps at that, propping his hip against the desk and giving Shawn a look that said he was listening.

“But how?” Sam blurted, pulling a face. “I mean, how do your powers work?”

Huh. Now that was interesting. No denial that he was psychic, just a sincere interest in how it worked, from Sam anyhow. Shawn let himself relax a little and felt confident enough to sigh and slowly lounge back in his chair. “That’s a trade secret,” he said succinctly. He flashed a grin at Sam’s brief scowl.

“I can’t believe you work for the police,” Dean muttered, apparently to himself, getting up to look out the window again.

“None of the others we’ve met have,” Sam added. Shawn raised his eyebrows. Others? His eyes darted between them, taking in Dean’s suspicious expression and the open spreadsheet Sam was looking at on the computer and realized that they’d been looking at Gus’s records of their past cases. He jerked back upright. “Dude, I thought you’d tracked me down from the crime scene, but you’re here because you want a psychic detective!” He’d been wondering how they’d found him, but clearly they had just been researching him and Gus’s work. Which meant that their reputation was good enough to inspire people this, this obviously badass, to break into his office to research them. “That’s awesome!”

Dean turned around to stare at him incredulously, and as he did so Shawn noticed the bunch of newspaper clippings hanging out of his pocket. The headlines Shawn could see mentioned the victims of the recent murders. He clamped his arms down on his chair and starting spinning around – he didn’t think this was a good time to yell gibberish and run across the room – before Dean could say anything. “Wait! I see…spinning. Things are spinning—“

“That’s because you’re on a spinning chair,” Shawn heard Dean mutter, and so much for preempting his sarcasm. Shawn ignored him.

“No!” He stopped suddenly and pointed at the two of them, and _woah_ , Dean had his gun out now and was looking slightly freaked out. Actually, Sam was too. Not good if Shawn didn’t want this to end badly. “Hey,” he said, dropping out of what he thought of as his vision voice, “No guns. The spirits don’t like guns.”

Now they were both gaping at him, and, if anything, Dean was gripping his gun tighter. “What spirits are you talking about, Shawn?” Sam said carefully, and there it was, the “I’m-talking-to-a-crazy-person” voice that Shawn was so used to hearing.

He wasn’t sure what answer Sam was looking for there, especially since he had seemed fine with the whole psychic thing a minute ago, so he mostly ignored the question. “The ones that send me visions, of course. Now put the gun away so I can finish, okay? Now, where was I? Oh yes, spinning. There’s spinning. You’re spinning. Like a spider’s web! Charlotte’s web! You’re spinning a web like Charlotte.” He made spider motions with his hands, just to see the look on Dean’s face. Priceless, almost as good as Lassie’s. He went on. “No, you’re spinning connections! Connections between the murders. You want me to help you find the connection between the murders!” He opened his eyes wide, as if the spirits had just shoved another idea into his head. “That’s why you were at the crime scene, you were looking for one, only you had to leave.”

“Because you freaking interrupted us,” Dean muttered again, lowering his gun. Shawn ignored him again, now trying to figure out who these two were. Not the murderers. Not feds, for sure. Relatives of one of the victims maybe? Although he was more used to the grieving sort who begged him for help than the dangerous-looking, gun-carrying sort who broke into his office to do a background check.

“So these spirits, they told you all this?” Sam asked. And they were back to the spirits. Most people were far more interested in what Shawn was saying than how he got it. He may have been a bit biased, but he rather thought that was the way it should be – he put a lot of work into his performances. They should be the most interesting part! 

“I’m not sure I should talk about my spirit connection with strangers. They’re kind of shy,” he said.

Dean was darting his gaze around the office now, and Shawn had no idea what he was looking for now. There certainly weren’t police hiding behind the filing cabinets. “You, uh, see any signs when these spirits are around?” Dean asked. “”Lights flickering, sudden drops in temperature, that kind of thing?”

“Um, no?” Shawn said, confused and not hiding it. He really couldn’t figure these guys out. Dean handled his gun competently, even expertly, and Shawn was certain that nothing was going to get shot that Dean absolutely, positively did not mean to shoot. But guys that oozed so much confidence generally did not get interested in the specifics of how Shawn did his psychic bit. An awkward silence filled the room as they all stared at each other. Shawn tried to read the look that passed between them at his answer, but these two were so perplexing. Dean had strangely relaxed at his answer, while Sam grew more serious.

“Can you describe these spirits for us?” Sam asked carefully.

“What is it with you guys and spirits?” Shawn complained. He rolled himself backwards and grabbed the bag of candy off the desk. If they wanted to play Twenty Questions about his spirits, Shawn might as well be enjoying himself. “Dried pineapple?” he offered. Both of them refused, Dean with a slightly revolted look on his face that was completely undeserved. Sure, Shawn had been skeptical at first too, but the stuff was amazing. He popped a handful into his mouth. “Sure? They’re like pure sugar.”

“Really?” Dean perked up at that and accepted some. He tentatively ate a piece and then nodded in satisfaction. He dumped some more into his mouth.

“Dean!” Sam called them to order.

“You’re the one that wants me to eat healthier,” Dean said, grinning around his mouthful. “’s fruit!”

Sam sighed, a deeply annoyed sound, and ignored Dean with an obvious effort. “As I was saying,” he ground out, “Can you describe these spirits for us?”

Damn the man was persistent. Shawn considered him. “Why does it matter?” Neither of them had denied his earlier “vision,” but they weren’t acting on it either.

“Come on Sammy,” Dean said easily, and Shawn found himself liking this more relaxed Dean, who had put his gun away and was eating all of Shawn’s dried pineapple. “He’s right. Does it matter? The EMF’s quiet, there’s not signs. No spirits. I say the guy is just a good guesser and a good investigator.”

“Hey!” Maybe he didn’t like this Dean more, since this Dean was dissing his skills! Even though he was pretty much right. Now _they_ were ignoring _him_ , something else he didn’t like.

“It’s Sam. And if there’s no spirits, there might be something else causing his powers, you know that!” Sam said hotly.

“Wait a minute!” Shawn said, once his brain had caught up to this. “You guys are _actually_ here looking for spirits? You’re interested in my astoundingly accurate psychic ability because you’re looking for _spirits_?”

Once again a series of long and significant looks passed between them. Man, if they weren’t lovers, they had to be either really close best friends or… His mind played connect the dots some more, this time with their faces. “You’re brothers!” he burst out, proud of himself for figuring that out. Now all their behavior slotted neatly into place. They turned to stare at him, and he grinned. “Now who’s just a good guesser,” he said smugly. Dean rolled his eyes and Sam shrugged sheepishly.

That out of the way, Shawn got back to the important point of this conversation. “Spirits?” he prodded.

Another look, this time defiant, from Sam, who drew in a deep breath. “Well, my brother and I, we’re kind of in the business of-“

“Sam—“ Dean warned.

“Hunting things. Supernatural things,” Sam finished. “And if you really do see spirits you need to tell us, because they could be dangerous.”

Shawn stared at them, for once speechless.


	3. Chapter 3

Meeting Shawn for lunch wasn’t unusual. Showing up to find him studying case files was. Gus was immediately suspicious. “What’s this?” he demanded. Waking up at every noise because he was scared of crazy, fake-FBI killers finding him left him cranky.

“Why Gus, if you don’t recognize our case, maybe we need to work on your work ethic,” Shawn said primly, taking a huge gulp of his smoothie.

Gus frowned. “One, the Chief called us in to look at _one_ murder, and you’ve got at least seven files here. And two, you don’t read case files.” Usually he made Gus do it and give him the pertinent information.

“It hurts me to see you so cynical so young, Gus, it really does,” Shawn said, shooting Gus a wounded look.

Gus wasn’t fooled. “What’s all this?” he persisted.

“Have an apple-raspberry scone. They’re quite delectable.” Shawn pushed a plate around the pile of files towards him.

Gus’s sense of foreboding increased. It always did when he was around Shawn in distraction mode. “Shawn,” he warned as he finally pulled out a chair and sat down.

Shawn sighed. “Fine, I’m trying to find a connection between these,” he said, not protesting as Gus grabbed the files.

He looked up a few moments later. “Shawn, these are all those unsolved murders the Chief’s been getting on our case about for the past few months. We went over all these when they happened and couldn’t find anything!” He knew those blots on their solve rate bothered Shawn, but Gus had thought he’d gotten over it.

“There’s a connection, I can sense it,” Shawn declared. Gus snorted.

“You do realize I know you’re not really psychic?” he asked. A waitress came by and he absently ordered a sandwich as he stared at Shawn. He was still hiding something - Gus knew it. Something tugged at his mind about these murders and he frowned.

“I have great instincts!” Shawn said, and Gus could tell that, yes, he really did believe there was a connection somewhere in these.

“You have something,” he retorted, opening the first file. It was the newest murder, and something flicked in Gus’s mind as he looked at it. He jerked his head up. “Hey, didn’t those two fake FBI agents mention a connection too?”

Warning bells went off in his mind when Shawn’s face immediately became blank. “Maybe they did,” Shawn admitted. “Maybe they’re on to something.”

“Don’t even tell me you dragged out all these case files because of what a pair of lying, probably-murderers said!”

“They’re not murderers!” Shawn protested.

Gus’s sense of foreboding exploded.. “Shawn, don’t tell me you think they were right.” Shawn didn’t answer. “Shawn!”

“You said not to tell you,” Shawn complained.

“Shawn!”

“But Gus, they had enough evidence to convince even you!” Shawn whined.

“You-“ Gus abruptly realized how loud he was talking and lowered his voice to a loud whisper. “You _talked_ to them again?” he hissed.

Shawn shrugged and nodded, like this was no big deal. Gus was used to Shawn landing them with dangerous cases before, but this… “They were impersonating—“ The waitress appeared at his elbow with his sandwich, and he choked on the rest of the sentence until she was gone again. “They were impersonating _FBI agents!_ Why would you even think about finding them again?”

“Relax and eat your sandwich, Gus. I didn’t go looking for them – they found us.”

“ _What?_ ” Gus couldn’t imagine why Shawn looked so smug about this; in Gus’s book this was a bad, bad thing. “Shawn, we have to call the cops now, get fake IDs, go into witness protection, move to Canada, live off the grid.”

Shawn tsked and shook his head. “We are not going into witness protection.” He paused. “Well, unless I can change my name to Skiffins O’Malley, because that would be totally awesome.”

Gus did his level best to glare Shawn to more common sense until Shawn continued. “I went back to the office last night and they were there. Turns out, they weren’t looking for us from the crime scene, but they _were_ checking out the psychic detectives they’d heard about.” Shawn capped this speech by snagging the fruit cup off of Gus’s plate and leaning back in his chair with a pleased smirk. Gus tried to figure out the appropriate response to any of this. Screaming in fear, perhaps. Or possibly hitting Shawn over the head. Maybe both.

“Why were they checking us out?” he managed to say.

“Like I already said, they’d heard about us,” Shawn promptly said around a mouthful of Gus’s fruit. “Which means we have a reputation. They want our help.”

“Don’t you dare eat all my pineapple,” Gus warned as Shawn continued to scoop fruit into his mouth. He nodded as Shawn put the cup back. “Help to do what? And who are they?”

“They’re…investigators. Like us,” Shawn said. “Only not like us because they’re not psychic. But they’re interested in psychics – they want to know about our technique.”

Somehow Gus doubted this was the entire story. “We don’t have a technique,” he said, finally picking up his sandwich. “I don’t like this. We shouldn’t get involved with them.”

“Gus, don’t be a fraidy cat. Of course we should. I have a good feeling about this.” Shawn grinned. “Besides, I already told them to meet us back at the office tonight. So we have until then to figure out the connection.”

“If they’re investigators, why can’t they just do it themselves?” Gus muttered around a bite of sandwich.

“Because they don’t have our police connection to secure these,” Shawn said, patting the stack of files. “Now finish eating so we can look through these.”

Gus sighed and glared, but he knew when Shawn was this fixed on something he might as well be talking to his car. Actually, his car was more likely to listen to him. So he ate his sandwich, knowing that Shawn’s good feelings always ended up badly – usually for him – before they miraculously came together in the end.


	4. Chapter 4

“Man, why don’t we hunt in California more often?” Dean asked, leaning back in his chair until his back popped.

“Because there’s not much to hunt out here?” Sam said. He got Dean’s point though. They were still eating cheap, greasy diner food, but they were eating it outside in the sun. It was nice – they didn’t get time to just relax in the sun very often. He had a sandwich and a pineapple smoothie – something that he hasn’t had since he left Stanford. Seems like most of the time they were hunting something so far north that drinking smoothies would just help the hypothermia along. Jess had loved smoothies. Had loved sitting in the sun with smoothies even more.

“So what’d you think of him?” Dean asked around a mouthful of sandwich, interrupting Sam’s quiet moment of memories.

“What?” Sam said, yanking back to what they were here for.

“Shawn Spencer,” Dean said with exaggerated patience. “What do you think about him?”

“You sound like you’re planning on asking him out on a date,” Sam teased, settling in for some banter. Being here brought up too many memories, and he was going to end up giving Dean lots of material for emo jokes if he wasn’t careful.

“His psychic thing, you moron,” Dean shot back. “You think he’s legit?”

Dean’s body language and face were guarded, which meant he wasn’t sure and was actually interested in Sam’s opinion, all insults aside. Sam took a bite of his own sandwich and thought back to last night and the bundle of mixed signals that was Shawn Spencer. “Well, he wasn’t expecting us at his office last night,” he offered.

Dean snorted. “Well we weren’t expecting him either,” he said. “He sure got over his surprise fast enough though.” 

Sam nodded. Spencer had seized up the situation and put on a game face almost as fast as them. “He figured out why we were there quickly, _and_ he figured out we weren’t real agents the day before really fast also.” he added.

“He _didn’t_ know about anything supernatural before you told him” Dean said pointedly, glaring a little. He had not been happy with Sam for letting that at out of the bag, but Sam hadn’t wanted to take the chance on something they needed to hunt causing Shawn’s visions.

Sam ignored the glare and added another point to the list. “But he knew we had been digging up a grave.” And hadn’t that been a shock, having Shawn lay that out halfway through Dean’s explanation of spirits. It had been a routine salt and burn, for a spirit completely unconnected with this case, and if Shawn was just a good investigator he wouldn’t have been known about it at all. Of course, he had prefaced this vision by leaping out of the chair, shouting salt shaker, and had then proceeded to do a completely dorky and ridiculous dance while they had stared.

“If your visions ever start manifesting like that, I’m leaving you at a rest stop,” Dean threatened, and Sam knew he was thinking about the dance too. “You’re embarrassing enough as it is.”

“Jerk,” Sam said, mostly unintelligibly because of the massive bite of sandwich in his mouth.

Dean gave him a look of disgust, stuffed a bigger bite in his mouth, and mumbled. “Bitch.”

Sam thought some more. “Something about his visions…” he said slowly. “They’re not right. They’re _easy_.”

“You mean they sleep around a lot?” Dean quipped.

“Shut up. I mean, when I get a vision, it hurts, and it’s intense, and I never feel like dancing afterwards,” Sam said.

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, looking thoughtful.

“And mine are all of the future,” Sam pointed out. “That’s why Shawn didn’t know we would be there! His visions are all of the past, or related to things he’s looking at then.” He hadn’t noticed that before now, but Shawn’s visions did seem to be more of the psychic reading of the past order, rather than Sam’s visions of what was going to happen unless he changed something. “He’s not anything like me, or those other people we’ve found, Dean. He’s something else.”

Dean nodded. “I agree. No one he knows has burst into flames on a ceiling either.”

Sam gave his brother a horrified look. “You asked him that?” That had been one of the things they were going to look up during their research on Shawn Spencer, but Shawn had interrupted them before they’d gotten that far.

Dean shrugged. “When you went outside to get Dad’s journal to show him,” he admitted.

“And that didn’t, you know…freak him out a little?” Sam asked sarcastically.

Dean shrugged. “Not more than any other person. He wasn’t trying to cover anything up.”

Sam shook his head and sighed at his brother’s lack of tact when it came to a case. “So he may be actually psychic, but not in the same way I am. Where does that leave us?”

Dean shrugged again. “Since he knows what we do, and there weren’t any new bulletins out for our arrest this morning, I say we see if he can help us. Psychic or not, he _does_ have an impressive solve rate. He may be useful.”

Sam snorted, “You mean he shares his candy and is a smart ass like you.” Dean had kept a physical distance from Shawn last night, probably because Shawn’s tendency to jump up and down and wave his arms everywhere when he made a point, but the two had settled down into trading sarcastic barbs and mock insults fairly quickly.

“Do you think he’ll really be able to get his hands on those files?” Dean asked, ignoring him.

It was Sam’s turn to shrug. He hadn’t been able to gain access to the files online, and after being IDed by Shawn at the crime scene they hadn’t dared try their luck getting them at the police station. Without those files they were pretty much stuck, unless they got lucky or they wanted to show their faces at the crime scene again. “I guess we’ll see tonight,” he said. They were meeting Shawn again to go over the details, try to find a connection between the cases.

Across the table, Dean tried to chug the last third of his smoothie and yelped, clutching his head. “Brain freeze!”

Sam sighed. No wonder Dean and Shawn got along so well – they were both secretly five. It was going to be an interesting night.


	5. Chapter 5

Shawn was just putting the finishing touches on a portrait of him and Gus fighting off an army of zombies when he saw Dean and Sam walk in, so he regretfully stopped adding in more blood and capped the red marker. Getting the big pack of markers to write on the dividing window had been the best idea ever. Still, time for work. He had revelations to steal from Gus, hunter-brothers to impress, and murderers to catch.

“Hey guys,” he greeted as they walked in. Dean was eyeing Gus suspiciously, but at least there weren’t any guns out this time. Despite being held at gunpoint by various people a number of times over the past couple of years, Gus had, for some reason, not gotten used to it, and Shawn suspected that being threatened by Dean would seriously damage Shawn’s chances of convincing Gus to keep working on this case. Especially once he realized that Sam and Dean suspected supernatural causes. Not that Shawn himself was entirely sure about those, but they’d shown him a lot of articles about things they’d claimed to have faced, and Shawn could tell that they positively believed in what they were saying. And, hey, they legitimately, completely believed that he was psychic in ways that only gullible idiots normally did. So he figured he could give them the benefit of the doubt, because the Winchesters were definitely not gullible idiots. Besides, he’d always been _sure_ that he’d seen a ghost in the cemetery that night when he’d been there on a dare…

Gus, however, was obviously _not_ going to give them any benefits of his not-inconsiderable doubts, if Shawn was to judge from his stiff posture. He’d stood up as soon as they’d entered the room, and his normal, customer-schmoozing smile was nowhere in sight. Plus, while Gus seemed perfectly willing to be scared of ghosts himself, he tended to doubt when anyone else professed to believe in them. 

Shawn looked between them. “This is Gus, my sidekick and minion. Gus, this is Sam and Dean, admirers of our psychic crime fighting ability.”

“Shawn, I am _not_ your minion!”

“I do not _admire_ you!”

Gus and Dean burst out simultaneously. They had both been glaring at Shawn when they said this but quickly turned to stare at each other before going back to glaring at Shawn. Shawn grinned wider, and he caught Sam snorting quietly. “Obviously you are both mistaken,” he proclaimed loftily. “You, Gus, have obviously not noticed that it clearly says minion in your job description on our official website.”

“When did we get an official website?” Gus demanded.

Shawn ignored him and turned his grin on Dean. “And you, Dean, admired us enough to interrupt your investigation to come here and meet us yourselves. Clearly admiration.” Dean folded his arms belligerently.

Shawn ignored him also and turned his back on them all. “But enough of this me discussion. We are gathered here today to find the connection between these murders, and I would appreciate it if we could get down to business.” He uncapped a purple marker and wrote “WHODUNIT” across the window. He thought he could hear Dean’s teeth grinding from behind him. 

“Shawn, why do you have a chainsaw to fight the zombie invasion, and I have a pineapple?” Gus demanded suddenly, and Shawn knew he had finally actually taken a good look at Shawn’s marker masterpiece.

“Because someone needs to have a refreshing snack of fruit ready when I get done annihilating zombies,” he answered promptly. “And because I haven’t drawn in your machete yet.” He turned around and looked questioningly at Gus, who nodded in satisfaction. He switched his gaze to Sam. “We got your files,” he said.

Sam’s eyes locked on the pile of manila folders on Gus’s desk. “Did they really just give them to you? All of them?” he asked, and was that a note of jealousy in his voice? Shawn cocked his head and considered the man. Eyes going back and forth between the files and Gus’s computer, check. Ink marks among the calluses on his hands, check. That slightly disturbing look of obsession that Gus got in his eyes when you got him started talking about the ever fascinating topic of spelling bees or comic books, check. At least three fewer concealed weapons than his brother, check. Why, Shawn would bet money that Sam Winchester was a dork of the same order as Gus – prone to retaining absurd amounts of information and actually enjoying learning it in the first place.

Gus’s hand came down on top of the stack of folders, and Shawn grinned. He loved seeing Gus get territorial over their office. It was hysterical and bound to be at least as amusing as provoking Dean.

“Technically we’re not supposed to have them at all. And we’re definitely not supposed to show them to anyone else,” Gus said frostily.

Sam hesitated uncertainly, and Shawn can see him wondering how much Shawn has told Gus. The answer to that is everything but the supernatural stuff – they could break that news to Gus on their own. Shawn threw him a rescue line though, because angry and officious Gus tended to take people aback when they first encountered him. Shawn thought it was the pastel shirts. People wearing pastel shouldn’t get angry. “Oh let him look at the files Gus, they’re working with us on this case.”

Gus fixed him with a narrow glare. “The Chief would kill us if she found out—“ he began.

Shawn cut him off with a wave. “Which is why she’s not going to find out. We’re getting all the official credit for this anyway.”

“If there is any,” Dean muttered. Sam elbowed him. He had a point though, Shawn realized. If this did turn out to be a supernatural case, it was going to have to remain unsolved by police standards, because Shawn sure as hell wasn’t going to ask them to believe that. Sure, he’d asked them to believe that dinosaurs and mummies had committed crimes, but those pronouncements had both led to real human culprits being apprehended. Either way though, Sam and Dean were not showing up on police radar.

Gus was looking between the three of them, picking up that there was something going on here he wasn’t in on. “If you don’t want any of the credit, why do you want to work this case?” he demanded, and sometimes Shawn wished his friend was a little less perceptive and suspicious. Not often, but occasionally.

“We got a personal connection,” Dean lied smoothly.

“Which is?” Gus was definitely too used to hanging around Shawn.

“We’re interested in psychics – we want to work a case with Shawn to study his techniques.” Shawn took a second to admire Dean’s performance skills – it took practice to lie like that, and he hadn’t even needed to drop any hints on the cover story he’d already told Gus.

Gus frowned. “Then why were you at the crime scene before you met us?

Sam stepped in to help this time. “Because we wanted to see what kind of case we’re dealing with first,” he said, not quite as smoothly as Dean, but good enough to fool most people.

Gus, of course, was used to dealing with a higher class of liars – namely Shawn- and he just crossed his arms. “Couldn’t you lose your private investigator’s licenses if you got caught pretending to be FBI?” Another point to Gus, a big one. Shawn had no doubt that Gus had gone home after Shawn had confessed to meeting the Winchesters again and made a list of all the things he could use against them.

“Haven’t got caught yet,” Dean said with an easy grin, clearly trying for charm.

“We caught you.” Gus’s frown didn’t waiver. Dean’s grin slipped a little.

“Actually _I_ caught them,” Shawn interrupted helpfully. “ _You_ totally believed them.” Gus’s glare briefly transferred to him before going back to the Winchesters.

“I’m not stupid. You’re not getting these files until someone tells me what’s really going on here.” He meant it, Shawn could tell. He’d forget it the minute Dean tried to intimidate him, but for the moment, he meant it.

“I see the connection!” Shawn announced loudly. Gus, Dean, and Sam all turned to look at him in surprise. He jerked his hands around in a wild parody of piano playing. “The music! It’s so loud!”

“What does it say, Shawn?” Gus was beside him, doing his sidekick thing, just like Shawn had hoped. Distract and evade – the Shawn Spencer way.

“It’s saying…it’s saying ‘No Sam, that note’s a sharp!” Shawn burst out, still widely playing the air piano. 

“Huh?” Sam asked, blinking in confusion.

“Not you! Samantha Morris! Andrea Malkin taught her piano.” Shawn said, rounding on the window and writing “ANDREA taught piano to SAMANTHA” on it in blue marker and drawing an arrow from one name to the other.

Gus was already on his way to his computer to check out Shawn’s connection. Some judicious checking of newspapers, and an article about a recital of Andrea’s students was unearthed, just as Shawn had found. Samantha’s name was among the participants. Now Sam and Dean’s gazes were tinged with a little bit of respect – Gus’s was just pissed off. He knew that Shawn had to have researched that before Sam and Dean had arrived, and Shawn was willing to bet he was mad Shawn hadn’t clued him in.

But Shawn couldn’t let Gus’s mediocre acting abilities spill the beans on his psychic ability to Dean, so he ignored Gus’s glare yet again and went on with his ‘vision.’ “Oh, now I’m getting something from Samantha!” He paused for dramatic effect, and then reached over and filched a red pen from Gus’s desk. “I’m getting corrections, in red pen, on notebook paper. But they’re friendly!” He tried to lean over to draw on Gus’s arm, but Gus dodged him.

“A teacher?” Sam hazarded. “But she was in high school – did a teacher do it?”

“No! She has the red pen…she’s helping students. There’s a logo – clasping hands.”

“The Boys and Girls Club! Samantha was a volunteer there!” Gus exclaimed, shooting a triumphant look at Sam.

“Yes!” Shawn exclaimed, jumping up and down. “And I’m getting the same logo from James!”

“From James? James Nelson? But he didn’t volunteer there,” Sam said, frowning thoughtfully. Damn, the man sure knew a lot, even without having seen the police files.

“No, but his kid spends every day after school there,” Gus countered from behind his computer. Shawn blessed Gus’s googling skills – it would look suspicious if he said everything. He wrote this up on the window also.

“Caroline Tanner was the next victim,” Dean said, looking at the window consideringly. He turned to look at Shawn expectantly.

Shawn choked and coughed. “They were having an affair,” Shawn said, when they all looked at him. That one had been trickier to find, but he’d eventually noticed that they both had memberships to the same gym. That and they’d found women’s clothes in James Nelson’s house that hadn’t been explained, since he was a widower of nearly a decade.  
Dean raised an eyebrow. “No crazy arm movements to go with that?” he asked.

Shawn shuddered, grimaced, and shook his head. “Best to just move on from that one quickly,” was all he said. Both Dean’s eyebrows flew up, and Sam and Gus had slightly revolted looks on their faces.

“And Sarah Walker?” Dean asked. “And I want something to take that visual out of my head please,” he ordered. James Nelson had been short and balding. Caroline Tanner had been pushing 5’10” and had arms the size of Dean’s.

Shawn grinned and obligingly put his hands on his temples. “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,” he chanted. Then he gasped. “I think, they’re all gathering here,” he choked out. “They know we’re trying to help them, and they’re all crowding. Please, guys, I need to talk to Sarah!”

His pronouncement had Dean and Sam looking around the room nervously, and Shawn almost broke character and started laughing when Dean jumped about a foot in the area when Shawn screeched. “I waaaaaaant you to knooooooooooow!” He stuck out his hands. “Uncontrollable jazz hands! She’s here…and she can sing it! I think she sang somewhere – a church? – with Caroline.” He played an invisible tambourine for good measure, and then he dropped down into his chair. Having multiple visions in a row was exhausting.

Sam was around the desk looking over Gus’s shoulder this time. “They went to the same church,” he confirmed. Shawn got back up to write that on the window and stood back admiringly. A straight line between all of the victims.

They all stood and looked silently for a moment. “None of them knew each other,” Gus said. “Well, obviously they knew some of the others, but no one knew everyone, and there’s no common thread. They’re not alike at all!” 

Which is what had given the department’s investigators fits. The cause of death hadn’t even been the same for all of them. Sure, they had all been attacked, but there were varying levels of intensity, and they hadn’t all died the by the same type of wound. The earlier ones seemed to have been choked, while Sarah had been attacked with a sharp object, which had not been identified. Shawn looked harder, willing himself to come up with a connection, to form all the bits from the files into something that could be used here. Finally he sighed in frustration. “I’ve got nothing,” he announced. “The spirits are as confused as me as to why they’re dead.”

But when he looked over at Sam and Dean, they were looking at each other significantly.

“Vengeful spirit?” Sam asked.

Dean shook his head. “Nah, they all haven’t been in the same place. I’d say cursed object.” Sam wrinkled his forehead in consideration, and then nodded.

Gus spluttered. “Spirits? Cursed object? Shawn, what is this?” he demanded.

Shawn shook his head. “Gentlemen, this is your territory,” he said, stepping back.

Sam and Dean exchanged another glance. It was Sam who cleared his throat. “Well, um, we are private investigators…of a sort. We just investigate mostly…supernatural things,” he said, obviously trying not to flounder under Gus’s disbelieving glare.

“Supernatural things? They’re not real! Not really real,” Gus insisted. “Shawn, tell me you do not believe this.”

Shawn shrugged and scuffed his toe on the carpet and wow this had gone downhill incredibly fast. “They were very convincing,” he mumbled. Okay, so he wouldn’t rock solid believe until he set eyes on an actual supernatural being, but he believed them enough to follow this. It was a better lead than anything else they had going for them on these cases. And the connection _was_ there. 

Sam, obviously used to people’s blatant disbelief, started in on his explanation of the supernatural, which was almost word for word what he had told Shawn last night. He must have had it memorized, which was handy, but wouldn’t really convince Gus. Shawn could see that Gus wasn’t buying it in the least. “Just show him the articles and books and shit you tried to show me,” he cut in. “He won’t believe you if you don’t.” Shawn, on the other hand, had professed belief in part to get out of having to examine at all the old looking stuff Sam had started pulling up online with way too much enthusiasm.

Sam brightened. “Hey, yeah. Good idea. May I?” he asked, gesturing at Gus’s computer.

Gus raised a bemused eyebrow. “There’s books?” he asked.

Shawn cut in again. “Yup, old ones. Full of big words and diagrams.” He nodded emphatically.

Gus still looked suspicious, but he moved back to let Sam over to his computer. Shawn gave a relieved sigh, convinced now that Gus wasn’t going to go and call Lassie, or worse, his dad in on them.

It took about fifteen seconds for Sam to start talking again, leaning back to let Gus see. It took about 30 more seconds for Gus to start asking questions. Two minutes later, they were both lost, Sam had hijacked Shawn’s chair, and he and Dean were left staring at a window with a line of victim’s names and a zombie battlefield drawn on it. Shawn shuddered as he heard words like “conjecture” and “hypothesis” and “energy fields.”

He looked at Dean expectantly when Dean gave a loud sigh. “Sammy?” Dean asked. No response, towards him anyway. “Sammy!”

Sam’s head popped up. Gus stayed glued to the monitor. “What?” he asked impatiently.

“You convince Mr. Suspicious there that ghosts are real, and then start looking for what we’re dealing with. I’m going to go back to the scene, take a look around,” Dean said patiently.

“Right, whatever. Be careful.” 

Sam was back explaining again, and this time Shawn caught something about “EMF.” Tempting…but he wasn’t about to get stuck here. “I’ll go too!” he announced.

Dean raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”

Shawn nodded emphatically. “Hell yeah. Let’s go. You need me to get into the scene anyway. And I might pick something up.”

Dean just shrugged and let Shawn follow him out the door.

“What’s an EMF?” Shawn demanded as the door shut behind them.


	6. Chapter 6

It wasn’t until the door slammed and he heard the rumble of a car driving away that Gus realized that this development left him alone in the office with a man who, until that morning, he’d thought was a fed-impersonating killer. He immediately scooted away a little, suddenly uncomfortable with the man, Sam, leaning over his shoulder. Not that a couple of inches would help him any, because Sam was huge. Although Gus did admit he looked a lot less intimidating in regular clothes, without the gun strapped to his side. But the fact that he now looked like a college student didn’t make what he was telling Gus any easier to believe. Even with all of the evidence he was showing Gus.

“So if some old stories and legends are true but not others, how do you know what to follow?” Gus demanded. “After all, you thought vampires weren’t real, but you say you encountered them. How do you figure out what’s real?” And he couldn’t believe he had just used the existence of vampires as part of a logical question.

“You can’t,” Sam admitted, rubbing a hand through his hair to pull it back from his face. “At least, not all the time. Experience mostly, you get a sense for what’s real, what will work. And we research, a lot, find the common denominator of all the stories. Or just guess when there isn’t one and hope. I’ve gotten a few broken bones when we’ve guessed wrong, but it’s all you can do.”

“Right.” Gus felt faintly appalled that, for all of the pretty damn convincing articles and documents Sam had shown him, the two hunters hadn’t come up with a more precise approach. He approved of all the research, but all of the guesswork seemed so inefficient. Impossible for others to follow and impossible to judge the effectiveness of, except that the spirit or creature or whatever was gone in the end. But it sounded like they got hurt a lot in the process.

It sounded a lot like how Shawn operated actually – all leaps of intuition and roundabout investigating until only Shawn could follow the thought process needed to get to the end result. Admittedly, that result was usually the bad guy being arrested, but still. Didn’t anyone believe in organization and a set procedure anymore?

“So your premise that we’re dealing with a cursed object is based on…” He left the question hanging in the air.

“How there’s no victim type,” Sam said, swiveling to look at Shawn’s notes. “There’s a connection, but not to a place or one person, so it’s probably something small that could be passed easily from person to person. Maybe the first victim picked up it up somewhere on vacation, and it just got passed along. There’s no set time between victims, so it’s got to have a physical or emotional trigger.”

“Emotional?” For some reason, Gus had a mental image of a ghost crying and asking why the victims couldn’t just talk about their emotions like some kind of supernatural Dr. Phil. If Dr. Phil killed people when they didn’t cooperate.

“Yeah,” Sam nodded, turning to look at Gus. “Like feelings of intense anger or grief. Often it’s what ties a spirit to this world, instead of them…moving on. Curses are often the same, and if there’s not a physical trigger to the curse, like just picking it up, then emotion is the most likely trigger.”

Gus thought about this. “So you’re saying you let Shawn, and Dean, go investigate something that may kill over an _emotion_?” he demanded in disbelief. He got out his phone, ready to speed dial Shawn, or the police, or somebody, because Gus was sure if there was anyone who could set off a curse, it was Shawn.

“Dean knows what to look for,” Sam soothed. “He won’t set if off, and if something goes wrong, he’ll get them out. We’ve done this before. They’ll be fine.”

Gus wasn’t entirely convinced of this, given what he knew about Shawn, but Sam and Dean apparently did this kind of thing a lot so…

He settled on texting Shawn: _Be careful._

He got a text back a minute later: _Dude, he has a machete & says I can cut a pineapple w/ it._

Now he was worried. He looked up at where Sam was pulling Santa Barbara newspapers up online. “Would Dean give Shawn a machete?” he asked.

Same looked up, and now _he_ looked worried. “A machete?”

Gus nodded. “Yeah. Shawn said something about Dean teaching him how to use it.”

Sam’s eyebrows flew up. “He’s going to teach Shawn how to use a machete?” he repeated. He swung briskly back around to the computer. “We’d better get this figured out then.”

Gus nodded again and headed for the other computer. Better not to leave Dean and Shawn any more time than necessary to just ‘look around.’ “What do we need to do?”

“We need to see if there’s any local lore or reports about hauntings, curses, urban legends, etc. It’d be better if we could figure out what we’re dealing with before we have to deal with it,” Sam said, clicking away at his computer.

“Right,” Gus said, getting to work.

\--

Forty minutes later, Gus sighed and pulled some of the police reports towards him. He didn’t know what he was looking for in the lore department, but maybe he could glean more information from the files.

As he looked over the autopsy reports, he gave voice to something that was bothering him. “If all of these deaths are caused by a curse, why aren’t any of them the same?” he asked.

Sam shook his head as he looked up, biting his lip. “I don’t know. It’s not behaving like any curse I’ve heard of before.” His brows were drawn as he looked back to his computer. “But the victims don’t have any connection to the same place, so I don’t see how it could be a spirit, and it’s not a creature.”

Gus flipped through all of the files again, then took out all of the autopsy reports and tried to arrange them in patterns. Male and female. From old to young. Finally he laid them out in order of occurrence. He frowned. As he and Shawn had noted, about half the victims – the first half – had been strangled, while the second half had been beaten. But now that he had all the autopsy reports laid out side by side, he noticed that those groupings were wrong; there weren’t two types of victims, there was a progression.

“Sam,” he asked carefully, “would it mean something if the attacks are increasing in intensity?”

Sam got up and came to look over his shoulder.

“See,” Gus pointed out, “the first and third victims, Andrea and James, were both strangled, but Andrea only has marks on her throat, while James is covered in bruises. The next victim, Caroline, wasn’t strangled at all, but she has the same bruises as James and died from, apparently, falling against something hard. And Sarah not only has the same bruising, but she was assaulted with a sharp object!”

“It’s getting stronger,” Sam muttered. “What does that mean?” He spun on his heel and hurried back to his computer. This time Gus got up and hovered over Sam’s shoulder.

“You don’t know?” he asked, frowning at the back of Sam’s head. He thought that these guys were supposed to be the experts; he didn’t like the idea that Shawn, and Dean, were out there with something Sam didn’t understand, because he’d said Dean knew what to do, but how could he know when they obviously hadn’t seen anything like this before?

“Curses aren’t really our thing,” Sam admitted, furiously clicking through web pages. “But now that I know something about the curse, it should be easier to find something about—“ He stopped and swore, pulling out his cell phone.

Gus leaned forward. The article Sam had stopped on was about haunted objects.

“Dammit, voicemail,” Sam said. “Dean, listen, get out of there. I don’t think it’s a curse – I think a spirit has somehow bound itself to an object, and I think it’s figured out how to manifest more and more strongly. Get out until we can figure this out. And if I find out you didn’t pick up because you’re doing something with a machete, I will kill you myself.” He flipped the phone shut.

“I thought you said spirits were bound to places!” Gus hissed at Sam as he took out his own phone and dialed Shawn. It went straight to voicemail. “Shawn’s not answering either.”

Sam stood, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “They usually are!” he said defensively. “Do you have a car?”

Gus already had his keys in hand. “Yeah. Why aren’t they answering?”

“Spirits interfere with phones sometimes,” Sam said grimly, already halfway through the front door. “Which is yours?”

“Over here,” Gus said, pushing past him and leading the way. He rounded the hood and started to unlock the door. “What’s wrong?” he asked, seeing Sam just standing and staring.

“I don’t believe this,” Sam muttered as he eyed Gus’s car. “Why can’t anyone drive a truck? Or at least an SUV?” 

Gus compared his little blue car to Sam’s hulking frame and snorted. “Get in, we gotta get to Shawn,” he ordered with a complete lack of sympathy as he slid in himself. The whole car bounced as Sam tried to maneuver his knees inside. “If you damage my car with your ginormous feet, I will end you,” Gus informed Sam as he started the car. “Let’s go.”


	7. Chapter 7

“So where can I get myself on of those?” Shawn asked, watching Dean wander around the apartment holding what Dean had explained was an EMF.

Dean cocked his head and looked at him. “Gonna take up ghost-hunting then?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Shawn shrugged. “No, but it might be useful in my line of work.” Clients would eat it up, him using his highly specialized equipment. Plus, it was shiny.

Dean grunted and started checking the far reaches of the room. “Hate to shatter your dream, Cleo, but this didn’t register a thing for any of your ‘visions.’”

Shawn could hear the quotes around the vision and snerked quietly to himself, resolving to have at least one more vision around Dean before they solved this. Speaking of, he started prowling around the room also, looking for clues. “Maybe it didn’t go off because I extend my power beyond the veil,” he said, scanning the large floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that dominated one wall. Lots of framed pictures set in amongst paperback romances, bracketed by random knick knacks.

Dean snorted. “Or something like that,” he said. “EMF’s not picking up anything, let’s start looking for a cursed object.”

“You’re gonna have to be more specific than that,” Shawn retorted.

“Statues, things with strange symbols, things that feel creepy,” Dean said, scanning the room, working around Shawn’s bookshelf.

Well that was helpful, except there was so much stuff on this bookshelf he couldn’t see anything that “felt creepy.” Just picture frames and knick knacks. His eyes fell on a large shell – the kind that you heard the ocean in. He loved these things. “My psychic senses are telling me to listen to this shell,” he announced, picturing the look on his face as he enacted a vision based on this shell.

Dean looked at him. “Don’t touch any—“ he began as Shawn clapped it to his ear.

Several things happened at once, before Shawn could react to any of them. The room took a sudden drop in temperature, while the EMF in Dean’s hand _shrieked_. And he realized that he couldn’t hear the ocean in the shell he held, but screaming. _Nonononono noooooooooooo._ He dropped it from his ear to stare at it with blank horror just as Dean shouted a warning.

Shawn spun to look at him in time to see a woman appear between them, and he was struck dumb. She was…translucent, shorter than his or Dean’s shoulders, her face clearly bruised and bloody. A spirit, he was looking at an actual spirit. He barely had time to wrap his head around that, much less take in the murderous expression on her face before she moved. “You won’t get away with this!” she yelled, and she shoved Dean hard enough that he went flying back onto the coffee table with a _crash_.

Shawn just had time to think about moving to help Dean when she _flickered_ and was suddenly right in front of him. “You can’t do this, you’ll pay,” she hissed, and Shawn braced himself to be pushed, but instead she was on him, spectral fingers surprisingly solid as they clawed into his neck, squeezing viciously. Shawn wheezed and flailed to no effect, and he was thoroughly panicking before he heard Dean shout again, and his solid body came flying in from the side, tackling Shawn about the waist. They both flew sideways to the floor as the spirit vanished with an angry shriek, and never had Shawn been so glad to be tackled in his life. But the spirit appeared again almost instantly, and Shawn managed to gasp out a warning.

Dean spun around into a crouch, but the spirit _flickered_ again and was on Shawn before he could blink. Kicking had no effect either, and what did this chick have against him? He watched out of the corner of his eye as Dean dove off to the side and came up with a small cast-iron statue that had been used as a doorstop. With a grunt, he swung it through the spirit, and she vanished again. Shawn frantically sucked in air from his place on the floor. Dean grabbed his arm and started to haul him to his feet, Shawn disoriented enough to not be much help.

Evidently iron worked better than fists, because the spirit stayed gone long enough for Shawn to gain his feet, feeling rather wobbly. But just as Dean started to shove him towards the door with a “Get out of here—“ she reappeared, right in front of them.

Shawn just had time to hear Dean swear before the other man was torn away to fly through the air again. He hit something with an ominous _crash_. Shawn scrambled backwards after Dean – Dean was still holding the statue, and Shawn hoped Dean wasn’t too badly hurt, because Shawn had no idea what to do here. “Dean!” he called, skidding to a halt beside the remains of the coffee table Dean had landed on. He was relieved to see the other man sitting up and groaning. “Dean, man, come on, get up. She’s really pissed off and I can’t find that statue thing!”

He saw a flicker out of the corner of his eye and cringed, expecting to feel cold hands around his neck. But evidently the spirit had decided that Dean was more of a threat, because she ignored Shawn and flickered onto Dean. “Dean!” Shawn shouted again, casting about frantically for the statue. “Damn, damn, damn, where is it?”

Across the apartment, the door crashed open.

“Dean!”

“Shawn!”

Shawn jerked his head up. Gus and Sam were standing in the doorway. Gus’s eyes were bulging as he took in the scene before him, but Sam had already efficiently sized things up and was striding forward, flinging salt. The spirit vanished with a shriek, and Dean gasped and cursed as he was released. Sam’s long legs had him across the room in a blink, and he hauled Dean out of the remains of the coffee table.

Shawn jumped as a hand landed on his arm, but it was Gus, not the spirit. “Come on Shawn!” he yelled, dragging at Shawn’s sleeve.

“You’ll pay! You won’t—“

Gus shrieked as loudly as the spirit as she suddenly appeared again. She was appearing faster, and she looked a lot angrier. Luckily Sam was ready with salt again – and never had Shawn found a common household item so amazing, including that time he had managed to fill Gus’s shoes with whipped cream without him noticing – and then he and Gus were practically thrown out the door by Sam and Dean.

“Go – parking lot!” Dean wheezed at them. “She won’t be able to go far from her focus!”

There was a lot of screaming and yelling and cursing as they all piled into the hallway, including, as it happened, the spirit. She took Sam off guard, and she managed to send him flying through the door into the stairwell before Dean could move in with the statue. Shawn bolted through the door after Sam. Luckily, he’d hit a wall, rather than a couple of flights of stairs, and he was already pushing himself up when Shawn got there. Gus skidded to a halt beside him and they each grabbed an arm and finished pulling Sam to his feet.

“Thanks,” he said shortly, eyes fixed on the door they’d come through. “Where’s Dean?”

“He’s –“ Shawn began, just as Dean burst through yelling for Sam.

“You alright?” he asked, when he saw that Sam was standing. He grunted at Sam’s nod. “Then let’s go, before that bitch comes back.”

They managed to get outside without any more appearances from the spirit, although Shawn didn’t relax until he saw Dean toss the statue aside to examine Sam’s head.

“Get off!” Sam said, batting his hands away. “I’m fine – you’re the one she was strangling.”

“I’m fine, that was mostly – shit, Shawn. You alright?” he asked, swinging around to look at Shawn, who was leaning back against Gus’s car gasping a bit for breath. He managed to raise a shaky thumbs up. He didn’t think anything was permanently broken.

Gus was fidgeting beside him. “That was – you just – are you – that was a ghost!” he burst out, craning his neck around to look everywhere, as if the ghost might appear again. Shawn could tell he was on the edge of flipping out, but that he didn’t want to be where anyone could see them when he did. “We should go before someone calls the cops.”

At Gus’s stuttering Dean raised an eyebrow, but Sam just nodded. “Good thinking. We’ll meet you guys back at your office?”

Gus nodded jerkily, and Shawn started fumbling with the door handle. He sort of fell into the seat, which was a _lot_ further back than normal. He laughed when he realized why. “How did Sam fit in here?” he asked, because even with it this far back, he couldn’t see this working.

Gus gave a terse laugh. “It wasn’t pretty.” He started the car. Dean and Sam had already pulled out of the lot, and Shawn almost flew into the back seat as Gus peeled out after them. “Woah, hold on there. Gimme some warning before you do that!” he said, righting himself.

Gus was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that Shawn thought there were going to be imprints when he finally let go. “Shawn, that was a ghost. A _ghost_.”

Shawn pulled a grin, ignoring the ache in his throat. “I know! Isn’t it cool?”

“It tried to kill you!” There was a squeak present in Gus’s voice.

Shawn’s grin widened. “But it didn’t. We were totally handling it before you guys got there.”

Gus’s look called bullshit. “Dean was being choked,” he pointed out.

Shawn leaned back and folded his arms. “All a part of our cunning plan.” As was this – he needed to distract both Gus and himself or things were going to get ugly fast, because, _damn_ , he had almost died back there. From a _ghost_. Right, distraction.

Gus snorted. “Shawn, you don’t do cunning plans, and you’re not a real psychic – we should not be involved with this. We should not even know about this.”

“Gus, calm down,” Shawn placated. “Now that Sam and Dean know what we’re dealing with, I’m sure they can take care of this with less strangling.”

Gus just _hmphed_ , and Shawn thought of something. “How come you guys showed up, anyway?”

Gus shot him a sideways glance. “I realized the attacks were getting progressively more violent, and then Sam realized it couldn’t be a cursed object and that it was probably a spirit attached to an object. But neither of you answered your phones when we called to tell you, so we had to come and save your asses.”

“You never called—“ he began, but when he pulled out his phone, it did indeed say he had a missed call. “Hmm, odd.”

“Sam says spirits sometimes interfere with cell phone signals,” Gus explained, and Shawn could hear a hint of smugness that Gus knew more than him. Shawn snorted, but let Gus keep that point – better than him worrying about dying.

Gus pulled into their office parking lot and parked. The Winchesters were, of course, already there, although they were still sitting in their car. They got out when Shawn and Gus did; Sam was fine, but Dean was favoring a leg – from crashing into the coffee table, Shawn thought.

“Hey, are you really alright?” Sam asked, once Shawn got close enough. “Dean says that spirit was really after you.”

“I’m fine,” Shawn insisted, and it was mostly true. “She did particularly hate me though.”

“Any idea why?” Dean asked.

Shawn shook his head. “Never seen her before.”

“Yeah you have,” Gus interrupted.

“What? Where?” Shawn couldn’t remember anyone who had looked like that ghost. He hadn’t hooked up with anyone with black hair in at least a month.

“I’ll tell you inside. I need to look something up,” Gus said, and for once his mysterious air worked. Shawn wondered if he’d been practicing. Still, he exchanged baffled looks with the Winchesters and followed Gus inside.

Gus was busy pulling something up on his computer. “Gus, I’m sure I don’t know who she is. Clearly, you’re stressed and seeing things – besides that ghost, which we all saw, so I don’t think that counts as—“

“Do you recognize her now?” Gus interrupted him again, turning his monitor to face them. There was a news story up, with a picture labeled as Mary Brooks, and Shawn remembered that case – it was – 

“Well damn,” he said, slumping to sit on his desk. “I _do_ recognize her.”

Shawn could see Dean and Sam read the headline: “Woman Beaten to Death in Own Store.” Now that Gus had brought it up, he could remember the details about it, but it hadn’t been a case he had been involved in. In fact, it had been pretty clear-cut, open and shut so quickly that he’d only heard about it on the news, rather than at the station.

Dean turned towards him with a raised eyebrow. “You know her? Explain.”

“Well, I didn’t _know_ her know her,” Shawn said, pushing off the desk and running a hand through his hair. “But I remember hearing about her case.”

Gus nodded. “It was really high profile.”

Sam was leaning over and reading the article. “Says here that she owned a popular souvenir store on the beachfront, and that she was found beaten to death in the store.”

“Yeah, they found out it was some local punks that did it,” Gus said. “They used it as a reason to call for a crack down on gang activity.”

Shawn nodded. “It was a big deal because that area is supposed to be really safe – for all the tourists and families and such.” Everyone turned to look at him. “What? I can know a fact! I worked down in that area for a while, a couple of years ago. What I don’t understand is why she’s a ghost – they caught the guys that did it.”

“That doesn’t always matter to a spirit,” Sam explained.

“Especially if they died violently,” Dean added. “It’s the emotion, the unfinished business, a lot of the time.”

“Shawn, did you touch something before the spirit appeared?” Sam asked, still looking at the article.

“Dean was there too – why is that question directed at me?” Shawn asked indignantly.

“Because I know better than to just touch things when we’re looking for a spirit,” Dean retorted. “And he picked up a shell right before she appeared.”

Shawn shuddered. “I heard screaming in it, not the ocean.”

Sam looked up, interest plain on his face. “One of those conch type shells? Dean, do you think that shell maybe picked up the energy of her death, channeled it into the shell…”

“And that could have caused her to haunt the shell, rather than the store,” Dean finished. “Presto, one killer souvenir.”

“And why she was going after Shawn – until you started fighting her, she wanted him as the one who’d touched the shell,” Sam added.

Shawn looked at his hand guiltily. Maybe he should listen more to Gus about not just touching things. Then again, how would they have found the shell otherwise? He was totally the one to crack this case.

Dean made a face. “Does that say where she was buried?”

“Yup,” Sam answered, scrolling down to the bottom of the article.

“Why do you need to know that?” Gus asked suspiciously. “Shouldn’t you be after the shell?”

“I’ll go there tonight, salt and burn the body. Should distract her enough for Sam to get in and destroy the shell without her going all freaky on him,” Dean said. “It’s still early enough.”

“Dean, I don’t think we should split up,” Sam objected.

“You can’t _dig up a grave_!” Gus objected, even louder.

“Destroying the shell won’t be enough,” Dean explained. “We need to burn her body too, or she’ll still be around. And we can’t just burn her body, Sam, her focus on the shell is too strong. We need to get both, and as soon as possible.”

Sam and Gus both kept arguing, but Dean was evidently used to arguments, because when all was said and done, Dean’s plan won, although it was deferred to the next night, in order to give Shawn and Gus a chance to see if the police had been alerted to the disturbance earlier.

It turned out, they had been. The place was crawling with uniforms and there was talk of posting more of a guard than just crime scene tape and a locked door. Shawn, however, managed to talk himself in and over near where the shell had been dropped, where he palmed it directly into the fortunately large bag of salt he had with him. He was counting on the crowd and the salt to keep the spirit from appearing, and it apparently did. Dean nearly flipped out when Shawn pulled the bag out of his coat back at the Psych office though.

“What did you think you were doing?” he hissed as he hastily put an additional ring of salt around the bag. “You could have been killed!”

“I was thinking that there was no way we were getting back in there tonight – someone definitely called the cops,” Shawn retorted. “And that we needed the shell if we wanted to stop the spirit.”

Dean looked put out at Shawn’s eminently logical reasoning. “Yeah, well…don’t do that again. You talk to me or Sam before you mess with the job.”

“Technically, _you_ are helping _me_ on this case,” Shawn pointed out smugly. “I’m the one with a PI license.”

Dean ground his teeth together and called Sam over to revise the plan.

........

Shawn knocked on the Winchester’s motel room door at the bright and early hour of 10 a.m. “Good morning. Have a pineapple in commemoration of a successful partnership,” he said brightly, thrusting the fruit at a sleepy-eyed Dean as soon as he opened the door. Dean blinked slowly from the pineapple to Shawn.

“Why are you here and how did you find our room?” Dean demanded. Grumpy tone aside, he still opened the door and let Shawn inside. Sam, freshly showered and looking far more awake than Dean, was sitting at the table, looking at something on his laptop. He smiled and greeted Shawn and gave his brother an unsure look as Dean plunked the pineapple down.

“Hey Sam,” Shawn greeted back. To Dean, “Duh, psychic here, remember?” Actually, it hadn’t been hard to get Sam to start complaining about the types of motels they stayed in and then to drive around until he found Dean’s car.

Dean snorted and went over to his mug of coffee. “Still doesn’t explain why you’re here. Spirit’s gone, told you that last night.”

“Pardon my brother,” Sam stepped in. “He’s not human before his coffee.”

Shawn just grinned in a way he knew would irritate Dean. “I can see that. And you would have left town without another word and broken my heart, you cad.” He fluttered his eyelashes outrageously. Sam muffled a laugh; Dean just chugged the rest of his coffee.

“I would swear you’re some kind of demon, except I think you’d annoy them too,” Dean grumbled, heading for the coffee pot and pouring another cup. “Seriously, what do you want? Is there another problem with the spirit? Because I’m sure we torched her ass.”

Sam and Dean hadn’t let him come to watch that process, but Shawn was pretty sure they knew their business on that score. They’d taken care of the shell too. And Sam had even said that his idea of putting it in a bag of salt had been a good one before they’d left.

“No, no problems,” he said, smirking at the memory. “I just wanted to come by to say that we worked very well as a team.” Dean’s face turned suddenly suspicious; Shawn blithely continued on. “And I just think that we shouldn’t ignore that. So if you, for example, need any more psychic assistance, you should feel free to call me. I just thought this whole experience was soooo enlightening and –“

“Oh my god, if I give you my EMF, will you shut up and go away?” Dean interrupted. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you eyeing it.”

Shawn shrugged guilelessly. “Well, I _would_ feel inclined to leave and go experiment with it immediately,” he said. He barely caught it as it flew at him.

“Good. Take it. Go.” Behind Dean, Sam’s shoulders were shaking as he tried not to laugh. 

Shawn flashed him a triumphant grin and walked to the door. “Be sure to drop by next time you’re in the area—“ 

The door slammed behind him. Shawn briefly petted his shiny new EMF before pocketing it and walking to his bike. He wondered if Dean knew Sam had given Shawn Dean’s number. In case of any new supernatural emergencies. Not for crank calling at all. He smiled and put on his helmet. They wouldn’t get any credit on these cases, but this was so worth it.


End file.
